Family stories: The fallen tree

I've read quite a few great stories and series here and I thought I'd share some of the collective tales of my family. Generally I'm a skeptic when it comes to paranormal and I still think most of the things have an actual explanation that simply escapes our grasp because we lack data or ability to comperhend certain ways our planet works in. Sometimes our mind just plays tricks on us. The other times, well, we have to find an explanation or face the fact that there might be something 'out there'.

My family has had a few scrapes with not quite understandable events, so I would want to share a short one first. Please bear in mind English is not my first language, so the way I word it might be off.

Roughly a decade ago, my family had a small gathering in my uncle's household during late autumn. All of his siblings plus accompanying people, usually it accounted for twelve to twenty people. There are two roads and one path leading to my uncle's house. First one is the longer, but it's asphalt and runs through the middle of the village - nothing interesting ever happens there. The path is more or less a strand of trodden grass going from last house at the end of one of the many roads to smaller communities within neighbouring villages. I've walked it quite a few times as a shortcut, somewhere along the way it joins second 'road', which is your casual field road with gravel and a patch of grass in the middle. This second path is a shortcut if you don't want to add few km to your trip, but it's mostly devoid of houses and as you might suspect - there are no lamps next to it. I myself have walked it during evening hours only once and it's quite eerie - there are parts with tall rushes that obstruct your vision for a few hundred metres as well as crooked old trees, in which my father used to point me to birds' nests and various other animals' homes when I was a kid. It never frightened me because I knew that patch of land. Or so I thought.

Fast forward to the meeting, my closest family and I are already there together with aunt and part of her side of family. Only her daughter is missing, because she was coming late out of workplace and my cousin from the side of uncle hosting us, because he had to pick up his daughter. At that time I was still a teenager so we headed off to other cousin's room in our own little herd and started talking about casual teen stuff - TV shows, games, hobbies, whatever. 1 hour in and we hear that there's some noise in the hallway. It's the cousin who went to pick up his kid, let's call him J.L. 20 mins later we hear doorbell and then crying in the hallway. We rush out to see what happened and it was the cousin who was late from work - let's call her G.S. It was already dark outside. Her face... it just wasn't the same as I saw her last time. The effect eventually faded throughout the evening, but those eyes expressed pure shock. This is what happened then:

"Sorry I'm late, I had... trouble. Is everyone OK?" We give her weird looks and everyone agrees we were all doing fine. "Did any of you drive through the shortcut?" "Yeah, I did" - chimes in J.L. "it was clear and I even saw a deer along the way". This moment G.S. bursts into hysterical scream and aunt needs to calm her down. Turns out she drove the shortcut. "I was driving through the mist near the rushes and had a strange sensation, like someone was driving behind me, but when I looked in the mirrors, there was noone" she says, shuddering "but when I looked back on the road there was a tree fallen across, blocking the way, snapped near the bottom of the trunk. It wasn't that big so I thought I should get out and move it away..." she pauses for a few seconds, staring into the window, as if she was expecting something to be visible in the pitch-black darkness of rural area. "The moment I opened the door, I heard this weird mumbling, like a drunkard or something, next to my car and a strange, rotting smell blew in my face, like a compost pile, just more... " She doesn't end the thought, just sighs and continues with another " I closed the door quickly and realized it was dead silent. The engine wasn't running and now I could hear the mumbling growing louder. The mist thickened around me and I felt a sensation of being surrounded, suffocated, as if something was coming for me and I could do nothing about . I tried to turn the engine on two times, but it didn't work. My phone has lost the signal, so I couldn't call to any of you. Then the engine started when I tried for the third time. Then, then it started." she whispered. By that time all younger kids were successfully herded to go to sleep. Us teens were present, but of course we tried our best to look serious and unshaken. "What started, engine again?" inquired the J.L "No, the noise, loud thuds of something soft hitting the roof and back of my car. I thought it was another tree falling, but it would sound different... I was scared, really scared. I wanted out so I started backing up with my car until the road would allow me to turn around and get the hell out of there. The banging continued and I had no idea what it was, I could barely see the surroundings because of the mist, but there wasn't anything alive around the car that could be attacking me. Yet I felt attacked, chased, as if something was trying to get in the car. I reached a part of road, that allowed me to turn the car around and drive away. When the car faced away from the now no longer visible tree, the banging stopped" She inhaled deeply and fell silent for about a minute. "What was that deer you meet looking like?" She asked J.L. who replied "I don't know, it was a buck, it had only one antler and it was crooked in a funny way. Why do you ask?" G. S. didn't respond right away, like she was processing this information. What came out of her mouth next, for some reason, gave me chills that evening and my hair is standing up as I recall this memory. "When the noises stopped, I heard the mumbling again. So I looked in the mirror and saw a deer, buck with single, crooked antler moving towards my car, but it wasn't walking... it felt like it was sliding its feet on the road, it seemed like the source of the mumbling sound. I freaked out and drove away, thankfully the engine didn't die and I went the long way here. I would've been here long before you, J.L. but..." She fell silent and didn't say much for the rest of the evening. We understood. J. L. passed next to the same weird deer - as it turns out he didn't see any broken trees or any fog along the way. There was some shifty thing going on and everyone decided to not use the shortcut for the time being. Everyone was uneasy so adults decided to end the meeting and head home - everyone with at least one other person in a car. We kind of forgot about it until next year.

There was a man found near the rushes. The official story is that he was drunk and fell face-first into a shallow muddy puddle, only to suffocate and never get up again. People said there were weird, thin, smeared markings in the mud around him when he was found. We no longer use that shortcut.